I want to cover a few highlights from Philip's blog. He has attended HP Discover a couple of times and he leveraged what he's learned (and the fact that he's also now an HP 3PAR customer) to develop his understanding. I sent him a tweet this morning after I read his blog telling him that he's done a great job explaining things. Here's a bit of what his blog says - but there's a lot more so head over to Techazine.com and read the full postthere.

I had the pleasure of participating in the Evolution of Storage twitter chat today. We talked about how IT requirements have changed and I spent some time talking about HP 3PAR. There were some good questions and as I always, I really enjoyed "talking" to the community out there.

I had discovered this new feature that Twitter has called a custom timeline. It allows you to create a timeline of a conversation. So I took today's Evolution of Storage chat and turned it into a timeline you can read here. I organized it so that the conversation starts on the top and you can work your way down our discussion. So, here it is:

Evolution of Storage chat

Thanks to my new friends at RichardsonEyres in the UK for asking me to be a part of this - let's do it again soon!

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I recently told you about HP 3PAR StoreServ winning technology of the year via InfoWorld. Storage Magazine, another publication, is doing their Product of the Year awards. There are a couple of products that I wanted to point out that are finalists and since I have ChalkTalks on them, thought it would be a great opportunity to mention them here.

Today's blog post highlights two of those finalists: HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 and Brocade Fabric Vision technology. I have ChalkTalks on both of these so check out the full blog post.

I have a great video interview from HP Discover that I haven't shared with you yet. Andy McCaskey from SDRnews.com was in the blogger lounge doing interviews and one of them that he did was with Siamak Nazari. Siamak was a driving force behind the 3PAR architecture (he was a very early 3PAR employee) and is an HP Fellow and Chief Software Architect.

Andy talked with Siamak about how we are able to use a single architecture for entry mid-range to flash to tier-1 storage. Siamak has great insight into the HP 3PAR architecture and how choices were made over the years to get us where we are today.

I also want to tell you about a TweetCast that I'll be participating in. Our partner in the UK, RichardsonEyres, asked me if I would help answer questions about the evolution of storage and of course I said yes. We'll start the discussion at 11 AM ET on Thursday, 16:00 GMT. We'll be using the hashtag #EvolutionOfStorage. I hope you can join us.

As you probably come to expect from me, I have a ChalkTalk. I also took the opportunity in this ChalkTalk to give an overview of the StoreVirtual portfolio along with introducing the StoreVirtual 4335. There have been a lot of updates to the StoreVirtual portfolio over the last year - seems like we were either rolling hardware of part of the family every couple of months and there was also a couple updates to the LeftHand OS. I think the StoreVirtual portfolio is as solid as it's ever been and should be considered by any small and midsize business looking at a storage purchase.

The blog post also has the StoreVirtual podcastI did with StoreVirtual expert Brad Katz so be sure to check that out as it was a great discussion around the 4335 and Adaptive Optimization (sub-LUN tiering).

These days, you can’t talk about storage without talking performance. It’s easily argued to be a top concern for many customers. With the unpredictable workloads created from virtualized applications, an infrastructure must be put in place that can keep up with demand. The big questions are: So what storage do you choose to meet your performance requirements? Do you go middle of the road on expense with high counts of SAS spindles, or spend the money for an all-flash array?

Forgive me if I'm a bit giddy and excited but I just learned that our HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 was named InfoWorld's "Technology of the Year". Add to this that HP 3PAR StoreServ was also recently named the best in class mid-range array by DCIGand I think you can understand why I might be doing a big of a happy dance!

Here's what InfoWorld had to say about why they picked HP 3PAR StoreServ:

In the world of data center storage, the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 modular array is royalty.

Setting the HP 3PAR StoreServ apart from the competition is an underlying architecture designed specifically to eliminate the performance bottlenecks and failure modes of traditional block storage systems. Tight integration with VMware and support for the Storage Management Initiative Specification make the HP 3PAR StoreServ a perfect target for virtualization workloads. New all-flash models from HP 3PAR deliver high-end performance in basically the same package and integrate into the same management infrastructure. You can mix and match disk-based and flash-based units as requirements dictate, and draw on all the same HP 3Par features that substantially ease the burden of managing storage.

It’s a new year and I have a new job to kick it off. I’ve been the worldwide marketing manager for LeftHand, now StoreVirtual, for the past three years and now I am focused full time on VSA and Software-Defined Storage (SDS). It’s going to be a busy year as we move forward to make sure you understand the full benefits that SDS and our VSA products bring to your business. We kicked this effort off with the November announcement of the Unlock your Storage program, where customers who purchase any of the eligible models of the HP ProLiant Gen8 server line receive a free 1TB license of StoreVirtual VSA.

Momentum is building fast, making this the ideal time to revisit our products and leadership accomplishments when it comes to Software-Defined Storage.

With the performance increases you can realize with the all-flash HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450, I thought a ChalkTalk focusing on the storage network would be useful. In the ChalkTalk, I focus on the HP StoreFabric B-Series. There are a few key benefits that you can drive with Gen 5 Fibre Channel - and in case you aren't aware of what I mean by Gen 5, that's 16Gb/sec. Those benefits are:

Increase application performance: Obviously with more bandwidth on the network, you can virtually eliminate the network as a bottleneck.

Workload scalability: you can deploy more physical servers and increase your VM density to ensure applications get the resources they need.

Increased availability: is a solution that dramatically simplifies Fibre Channel (FC) SAN administration.

Connect is an independent community of HP users - it's a users group. Here is what the Connect websitesays about them: Connect is the largest technology community of HP business technology customers around the world. Connect’s mission is to provide its members with the best value and return on their HP business technology investments by providing ADVOCACY, COMMUNITY, PHILANTHROPY and EDUCATION. Connect supports HP business technologies including servers, storage, networking, security, operating systems and infrastructure software.

Nina Buik is the Chief Marketing Officer of Connect. I met Nina at our first storage Tech Day back in October of 2009. I have a ton of respect for Connect and specifically for Nina. She is an energizer bunny - she keeps going and going with energy to spare. She has more energy than almost anyone I've met and she is by nature a leader.

Nina recently asked me to be the HP liaison for the Connect Storage Special Interest Group. Since we were both at HP Discover, I asked Nina to do a short video with me. In the video, Nina gives a short overview about Connect. The video is less than 3 minutes so check it out.

Today, I want to hit another storage term that depending on who you talk to could have different meanings. We commissioned Mark Peters, Sr Analyst from Enterprise Strategy Group, to write a paper about the topic of tier-1 storage that he titled "The Changing Face of Tier-1 Storage in the Modern Data Center".

Mark is one of my favorite storage analysts out there. A few years ago we happened to be in London attended the same event and had a delightful dinner eating curry (Indian Food) in central London. We asked Mark if he would do a podcast with me to give an overview of the paper and it's a great discussion. I also asked Sandeep Singh to join me - Sandeep is the 3PAR StoreServ director of product management.

As we begin a new year, I thought it would be helpful for me to give you the many ways you can stay in touch with HP Storage and with me personally. I try to respond to everyone who reaches out via social channels so if you have something to say or a question to ask, don't hesitate to ping me!

I started creating ChalkTalks back in November 2012 - so a bit over a year ago. I've create nearly 60 of these. They include announcement overviews, new products, architecture discussions, and more. I enjoy making them and have had a lot of positive feedback. The one constructive criticism I hear regularly is some folks don't like the background music. I've turned the volume way down on it but can't see doing these without something to help cover up my voice-over!

I took over managing this group in April 2012. It's has grown tremendously (by nearly 4X) and there are some great conversations happening. It is a private group - meaning I review everyone who wants to join. It is for customers, partners, and employees of HP Storage. You won't find recruiters and I don't let members use the group for any kind of promotion. It is also the new home for the Connect (independent HP Users Group) Storage Special Interest Group (SIG).You can also connected with me on LinkedIn via hpstorage.me/CalvinZ. Let me know you read the blog so I accept your invitation to connect.